Property tax confusion

Got my property tax notice the other week. At first glance I had the same reaction as many others: ?Hey, what happened to that second $25,000 homestead exemption Florida voters approved in January??

Well, as they used to say in that old spaghetti sauce commercial, ?It?s in there.?

It?s just not real clear.

Which explains why Broward Property Appraiser Lori Parrish has been bombarded with calls the past week from confused property owners.

Here?s the deal. The first $25,000 homestead exemption is clearly listed under ?base exemptions,? but the second $25,000 isn?t spelled out or subtracted from the final ?taxable value? figure. That?s because the second $25,000 exemption isn?t applied to the school portion of property taxes. (Under terms of the January property tax amendment, school taxes were exempt from the second homestead exemption).

Parrish has assured property owners that the second exemption has been factored into the tax figures given on the notice. As a result, most property owners should have a lower overall tax bill.

That was the case for me. If proposed budgets are approved, my property tax bill will go from $2,936 to $2,690. That?s a $246 drop.

A reminder: The notice isn?t a final tax bill. It gives property owners a breakdown of their proposed taxes and alerts them of the upcoming budget meetings of the various taxing districts.

Here?s another beef I had with the notice: It fails to show the proposed millage rates for each taxing district. Millage is the amount charged per $1000 of taxable property value.

Some cities and taxing districts are raising millage rates to offset the increased homestead exemptions.

By law, proposed millage rates don?t have to be included on the tax notice, but it would be nice. Especially since this mailer is called the TRIM (for Truth-in-Millage) notice.

I asked Parrish if it would be possible to include each tax district?s millage rates (proposed and last year?s) on the notice. She said she would look into it for next year.

If you?re interested, here?s a link that shows that millage information for all Broward taxing districts.

Here's a link that shows the combined proposed millage rates (which includes all taxing districts: cities, schools, water districts, etc.) for Palm Beach County residents.

One more thing I?d like to see on the notice: A box with the ?portability amount,? the exempt amount a homesteaded owner could transfer if they move to a new primary home in Florida, a provision of the January amendment.

Homesteaded property owners have to calculate the amount on their own by subtracting the assessed value from the market value.

My portability amount is now $76,000, a big drop from the $125,000 it would have been last year. That?s because my home?s market value went down (because of the real estate slump) but my assessed value went up the maximum 3 percent. Portability is less valuable than it used to be, but with home prices dropping so dramatically the property tax bite that comes with a move isn?t as onerous as it used to be either.

Still, the basic unfairness in our property tax system remains: There can be huge disparity among neighbors in comparable homes, with recent homebuyers paying three or four times more than longtime homeowners.